Posted!

Join the Conversation

Comments

Welcome to our new and improved comments, which are for subscribers only.
This is a test to see whether we can improve the experience for you.
You do not need a Facebook profile to participate.

You will need to register before adding a comment.
Typed comments will be lost if you are not logged in.

Please be polite.
It's OK to disagree with someone's ideas, but personal attacks, insults, threats, hate speech, advocating violence and other violations can result in a ban.
If you see comments in violation of our community guidelines, please report them.

Kentucky basketball coach John Calipari: FBI may curb cheating but it's not that simple

Wednesday was an opportunity to spend the day with a bunch of cheaters and cheating enablers, also known as SEC men’s basketball media day.

And to be clear, the list of enablers includes all media on hand at The Omni Hotel downtown. We’re all very appalled by the recent, FBI-led exposure of the underbelly of college basketball, though not quite enough to stop our breathless coverage of recruiting or to judge coaches on anything other than wins and losses. And you better believe we’ll be filling out our brackets in March and getting in on every angle of the most exciting three weeks of sports in this country.

We’re now asking how things might improve in this bold, new, wiretapped world.

Not until college athletes are allowed to profit off their own success with endorsement deals, as are Olympic athletes. Until there’s money on the table for the laborers who feed a multi-billion dollar industry, it will keep reaching them under the table.

And that’s fine with me, frankly, and it’s fine with a whole bunch of people in this world who would never admit it out loud. Much of the outrage over this comes from emotional involvement with a particular program.

CLOSE

Kentucky coach John Calipari believes that the proposed rule change to have basketball players spend spend two years in college before declaring for the NBA draft will be beneficial for his program.

“Why didn’t we get that recruit?”

“How much did they pay for that recruit?”

“Wait, North Carolina set up a completely fake course of study to help its athletes and didn’t get any punishment?!”

OK, the North Carolina thing earned outrage from more than just Duke and N.C. State fans. It’s outrageous. And though NCAA rules are largely ridiculous and crimes against those rules are largely victimless, the recent federal indictments of 10 men — including Auburn assistant coach Chuck Person — was another reminder of the slimy characters who hold sway in this world and exploit kids.

I’ve heard coaches say that allowing college athletes to sign endorsement deals would open up all kinds of recruiting shenanigans. Bidding wars between companies representing the interests of various schools. And that’s different from the current situation how?

At least the Olympic model — which is not a new or original idea but is the only one that makes sense — would bring the money out in the open. Compliance departments would still be in business, vetting these deals. This would allow the stars whose jersey numbers are sold in their campus store to profit, as they should.

It would work with Title IX — a star women’s golfer could sign with Callaway, a star women’s basketball player could sign with Nike. And for most athletes on most teams, a scholarship is about all they’d get and that would be fair.

“How many players do the universities really benefit from them being part of the program?” Tennessee coach Rick Barnes said Wednesday. “Because there is a benefit, now, of having a college scholarship. There’s a benefit to that. There’s a lot of kids on our campus that are going to leave owing a lot of debt. A college scholarship is worth something.”

True. But there are some athletes who absolutely and directly benefit the schools they attend. Johnny Manziel is nobody’s innocent victim. But when donations to Texas A&M are $300 million more the year after he won the Heisman than in any other year in school history, and $500 million-plus in football facility improvements follow, and he can’t get 50 bucks for signing a picture, the system is a joke.

This would end a lot of hypocrisy. It would presumably clean up some of the slime. It would not totally end cheating because nothing will do that.

“The fact is, it’s been going on for probably 100 years,” Barnes said, and it has increased in the past decade with the NBA’s “one-and-done” rule, which forces some guys who would be making millions to attend college for a year, where they aren’t technically allowed to take money from agents and shoe reps but where they certainly understand their market value and logically would like to be financially comfortable during that year.

Speaking of which, Calipari had a big crowd around him Wednesday. Calipari and Auburn coach Bruce Pearl are the presumed bad guys of the SEC, but there are more than a handful of programs cheating. I agree with the several coaches who said Wednesday there are many who don’t.

And I give Calipari credit. He asked the key question about any systemic changes ahead: “Are we going to make it better for these kids?”

He also gave a nod to the Olympic model, as did others. It's been argued as a solution for years in columns better than this one, but these things don't happen in a mere decade or two.

“Being fair may be that,” Calipari said of the idea.

“I think there’s a way to do that, I do,” Barnes said.

“Yeah,” Ole Miss coach Andy Kennedy said. “I like it.”

Let’s hope this goes beyond chatter soon, so we can still have all the things we love about college sports and get rid of some things that have to go. In the meantime, let’s see if Barnes’ Vols can be better than their predicted 13th-place finish and if Vanderbilt’s Bryce Drew can close the deal on some big-time recruits. We’ll have stories for you to click at Tennessean.com.

Contact Joe Rexrode at jrexrode@tennessean.com and follow him on Twitter @joerexrode.